LET ME TELL YOU ABOUT MY HAIR...
Our hair is linked intrinsically to who we are – to our identity, gender, culture and ethnicity – whether it’s on our heads or our bodies. HOLLY O’NEILL talks to seven Irish women about how their relationship with their hair has shaped their lives.
Holly O’Neill talks to seven Irish women about their relationship with their hair
Amber Jean Rowan
MODEL , ACTRESS AND FOUNDER OF HAIR FREE
I didn’t really understand what my hair meant to me until it was gone. It starting falling out when I was 15 as a result of alopecia, and was gone within a year. When you’re 15, anything different is daunting and terrifying. My journey with hairpieces began at around 17. The word “wig” for me has a lot of emotional attachment. Before I needed to wear them, “wig” seemed a very unglamorous word. A wig means you’re covering something, but a hairpiece is more of an enhancement. Once I got my first good hairpiece, I came out of the salon and felt amazing. When 26-year-old me looks back now, it’s interesting how I thought, and still do sometimes, that long hair equals beauty. My hairpiece for so long was my shield. It hid my most vulnerable part of me. I go hair-free more often now, but when I don’t have my hairpiece on, I feel completely vulnerable. It protects me. I’m getting to the point where I’m just as comfortable being hair-free as I am wearing a hairpiece. Finding confidence without wearing it has only happened in the last year or so. I’m taking little steps, like arriving at a shoot without my hairpiece on, or going to a talk with my scarf on and taking it off once I’m there. The last month I spent in India, I made a promise to myself that I wasn’t going to wear my hairpiece, and that has made a massive difference. It took me until my third day in to take off my headscarf, but once I did, it was so liberating. At the end of the day, hair is just hair; it means so much, but in the same breath it doesn’t. It’s just strands of dead matter that happen to be on our heads. A gorgeous quote I posted on my Instagram was “Don’t define yourself by things that are temporary. Define yourself by things that are eternal.”
“At the end of the day, hair is just hair; it means
so much, but in the same breath it doesn’t.”